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Dear Jim Wallis

The Stupak Amendment does not achieve “neutrality” by the government when it comes to funding abortion coverage. It makes it impossible for a woman to buy insurance that covers abortions, which are, by the way, legal procedures in America. By creating a two-tiered health care system where wealthy women can have abortion insurance (and, subsequently, afford to have abortions if needed), but poor women do not have the option of health insurance that covers abortion on the exchange or in the public option, the Stupak amendment creates precisely the sort of situation where women may be forced to turn to back alley abortions or dangerous self-inflicted procedures.

Please stop telling women and progressives that they are unreasonable to oppose this dangerous legislation. Demanding that their legal rights be preserved by health care reform legislation is not “secular fundamentalism,” but your refusal to stand up for poor women who want to legally obtain abortions is, in fact, a pretty shade of religious fundamentalism. That it comes from an ostensibly progressive religious leader is all the more disconcerting.